MAJDAL SHAMS — The fence in the valley on the edge of this Golan Heights Druze town used to be known as the “shouting fence,” where people on the Israeli side and their relatives and friends on the Syrian side yelled to one another and traded news.
“That was before WhatsApp and Zoom,” quipped one resident who did not want her name used on Monday, the day after the fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Syrians around the world have taken to the streets to celebrate the end of Assad’s dictatorship, and the Druze in Majdal Shams have also held parades through the town that is part of the strategic Golan plateau captured from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War and later effectively annexed by Israel in 1981.
The community is excited about the sudden change in Syrian politics, and their joy is also personal. For 57 years, families in the Golan Heights, including Majdal Shams and three other towns, Ein Qiniyye, Mas’ade, and Buq’ata, have been cut off from their Syrian relatives, with a UN-patrolled buffer zone slicing down between both sides, and a single crossing point.
Israel and Syria are still officially in a state of war, but some 20,000 Druze residents in the Golan Heights now have hopes that the new government could allow them the possibility of visiting their relatives again.
The fall of Assad is “good news,” said Em Nasim Nabih, wearing a traditional Druze white veil over her head, but not covering her mouth as some traditional women do, as she passed near the border fence.
An IDF tank stands by the border fence between Israel and Syria in Majdal Shams on December 9, 2024. (Lindy Barnett)
The Syrian event seems like a lucky omen less than five months after a devastating Hezbollah attack on July 27, which killed 12 children and teenagers on a soccer field in the center of the town.
It was the single deadliest Hezbollah attack since the terror group began striking northern Israel on October 8, 2023, one day after Hamas-led terrorists launched the surprise attack in southern Israel, slaughtering some 1,200 people in southern Israel and abducting 251 hostages.
Throughout the war with Hezbollah — which was halted on November 27 with a 60-day ceasefire — Majdal Shams residents were living in a war zone.
“Until this moment, we didn’t have peace,” Nabih said.
People at the scene of a deadly Hezbollah missile attack at a soccer field in the Druze town of Majdal Shams, in the Golan Heights, in which 12 children were killed, on July 29, 2024. (Michael Giladi/Flash90)
When asked about her political ties and loyalties, however, Nabih told a reporter for The Times of Israel that she did not want to talk about whether the Golan Heights “is Syrian or Israeli.”
She lives on the Golan Heights, she said and feels an ancestral, spiritual attachment to the land. She made it a point to emphasize her ties to the land she lives on – not necessarily to the leaders who govern it.
“We never left our homes when the area went from Syria to Israel,” she said. “We are here.”
Nabih also expressed her hope that the new government “will listen to the needs of the people.”
The rooftops of Majdal Shams facing the valley and hills of Syria on December 9, 2024. (Diana Bletter/Times of Israel)
Abu Mohammed al-Golani, leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), launched a lightning offensive with other rebel groups, seizing government-held territory and capturing Damascus on Sunday. Al-Golani, who now uses his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has tried to reassure minorities that he will not interfere with them. In Aleppo, which the rebels captured a week ago, there have been no reports of reprisals.
Yet many Syrians remain fearful that the HTS group will impose draconian Islamist rule because of its former ties with al Qaeda.
The Druze, a mystic sect that broke away from Shiite Islam in the 11th century, are considered heretical to Sunni Islam and have been targeted by radical Islamic groups. Some residents expressed concern that al-Golani might turn into an enemy of the Druze.
The leader of Syria’s Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group that headed a lightning rebel offensive, snatching Damascus from government control, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, addresses a crowd at the capital’s landmark Umayyad Mosque, on December 8, 2024. (Aref Tammawi/AFP)
Mountain village with a cosmopolitan accent
The main street of Majdal Shams, on a rugged edge of Mt. Hermon — known in Arabic as Jabal al-Sheik or mountain of the sheikh — has the feel of a mountain village, but with a cosmopolitan accent. There are upscale coffee houses, as well as clothing and cosmetic shops, along with the scent of wood-burning stoves. Instead of the black flags of mourning that were displayed after Hezbollah’s attack, today there is a large flag of the Syrian opposition hanging in the town’s main square.
Syria’s new era has given Druze residents a sense of pride in the country that had only engendered hopelessness during the years of the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011. Assad’s fall has also stirred complicated questions of identity, loyalty, and belonging.
Some of the Druze in the Golan Heights characterize themselves as “Golanis” and, unlike the 150,000 Druze who live in other parts of Israel, do not hold Israeli citizenship or serve in the IDF. Elsewhere in Israel, the Druze accepted Israeli sovereignty after the state’s founding in 1948 and generally identify as Israelis. Men from those Druze communities serve in the IDF.
A large Syrian opposition flag hangs in the center square of Majdal Shams on December 9, 2024. (Lindy Barnett)
The “Golanis” express an ambivalent, ambiguous relationship with Israel and an unfamiliar yet faithful relationship with Syria, a country that some of them have never visited and yet call “home.”
Among the crowd of residents and journalists gathered near the border fence was Wassim Safadi, a videographer who was born in Majdal Shams.
He watched Israeli soldiers guarding the fence, facing the hills of Syria. Soon after the fall of Assad’s government on Sunday, the IDF captured the buffer zone in the northern Golan Heights without facing any resistance. The military said the move was purely to ensure that attacks are not carried out against Israel.
Residents in the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights celebrate on December 8, 2024, after Islamist-led rebels declared that they had taken the Syrian capital in a lightning offensive, sending President Bashar al-Assad fleeing and ending five decades of Baath rule in Syria. (Jalaa Marey/ AFP)
Safadi mused about Assad’s fall. He said he watched the videos of prisoners being freed in Syria.
“What criminal mind could do that to his own people?” Safadi asked rhetorically. “He pretended to be a leader of the Syrian world, but we see he’s a coward.”
Safadi said that he hopes to visit his sister, who left Majdal Shams for Syria to get married in 2008. He has not seen her since.
However, he also expressed anger: “We see how Israeli authorities treat us,” he said. “We pay taxes here in Israel, but we’re still treated as third-class citizens. We hope that, one day, we will be able to live in equality here.”
The Education Ministry announced in November a new school curriculum that will cover Druze history, culture, religion, and society, including “the historical context between the Druze community and the State of Israel.”
Israeli-Druze bride Arin Safadi, 24, departs through the United Nations buffer zone at the Quneitra crossing in the Golan Heights to marry a Syrian-Druze groom, September 25, 2008. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty/File)
Transition
Linda Hassan sells brooms made of twigs, embroidered mats, and homemade specialties that she said are only made in the Golan Heights, including rendered sheep fat with bits of meat.
“We’re happy about what happened in Syria now, but we’re also afraid,” she said. “When there’s a transition, you don’t know what will be next.”
In Israel, Golan’s Druze are considered permanent residents with access to healthcare, education, and other social services and freedom of movement inside Israel. Hassan said that one reason Druze in the Golan Heights could not join the Israeli Army is that “we’d be fighting against our cousins.”
“Our lives are good here,” she said. “But our hearts are with Syria.”
Linda Hassan stands next to her homemade produce in Majdal Shams on December 9, 2024. (Lindy Barnett)
There was an uptick in the number of Golan Heights Druze requesting Israeli citizenship in 2022 because of the Syrian civil war. But most opt instead for permanent residency, out of concern that their acceptance of Israeli sovereignty might endanger their family members across the border in Syria.
There is also some fear that the community could be accused of treason by Damascus authorities, should the region be returned to Syria, according to Col. (Ret.) Sarit Zehavi, founder of the Alma Center, an Israeli research institute focused on the security challenges in the north.
On the main street of Majdal Shams, Kinana Ibrahim stood inside a clothing store surrounded by brand-name jeans, bomber jackets, and trendy baseball caps.
“It’s very complicated. Nobody knows what will be,” the 22-year-old Ibrahim said.
Kinana Ibrahim stands in the clothing store where she works in Majdal Shams on December 9, 2024. (Diana Bletter/Times of Israel)
Although Israeli-born, she does not want an Israeli passport. She fantasizes about seeing Syria, which she has often heard about.
“It’s beautiful there, but life is hard,” she said. “A lot of people dream of visiting Syria.”
She added that some in the village also dream about returning Majdal Shams to Syria, a topic that others were reticent to address.
“I was born in Israel, but I am Syrian in my heart,” she said.